The quick hit

Treat yourself to seeing the greatest American movie fantasy in a format that brings the old movie-palace experience into the 21st century.

Grade: A+

What's terrific about seeing Victor Fleming's “The Wizard of Oz” in 3D on the giant IMAX screen is how close it brings you to the people – and to Toto, too. Lovingly restored to full Technicolor glory and showcased in a format that transports viewers to the center of the action, the film conjures such a close relationship with the performers that you feel you can lock arms with them on the Yellow Brick Road.

When I last showed “The Wizard of Oz” in a college class, students were so used to the seamless CGI realism of digital special effects that, to my shock, they rejected the film in Munchkinland – they couldn't see past the Munchkins' lacquered hair. The 3D IMAX showcase not only brings the film a fresh luster, it also supplies “Oz” with a hip contemporary imprimatur.

Judging from the laughter and applause – and squealed comments like “Toto was great!” – youngsters at this edition of “Oz” succumb to its emotional strength and charm and overcome their unfamiliarity with moviemaking that relies on wit, storytelling and verve (or, as the Cowardly Lion would say, “voive”).

The people who reformatted the film have commented that it contains only 661 shots compared to a present day film's average of 1,800, and that its three-strip Technicolor camera moved more slowly than today's lightweight marvels. What moves like lightning is Fleming's rendering of L. Frank Baum's classic novel. Fleming and his unbilled rewrite man, John Lee Mahin, had the instinct to start the film with the speed of a runaway dog.

As farm-girl Dorothy rushes to protect her cairn terrier, Toto, from the hideous Miss Gulch, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are too busy with a busted incubator to comprehend her plight. Two out of three of her farmhand friends supply wisdom shaded by their own aspirations to be smart or intrepid. In short order, Miss Gulch flashes a sheriff's order to grab Toto, the dog jumps from her basket, and Dorothy and her pet strike out on their own. A kindly humbug seer advises the girl to go home. Then the cyclone hits.

King Vidor directed the Kansas scenes Fleming had prepared before he left the production to save “Gone With the Wind.” (Both movies were released in 1939.) They lack the rest of the film's electric pacing, but the characters immediately stick in your mind. When Dorothy meets their counterparts after the twister takes her to Oz, you know long before she senses it that you've seen them before.

What lights up the theater like strings of sparklers are close-ups and group portraits of Judy Garland's Dorothy, Ray Bolger's Scarecrow, Jack Haley's Tin Man, and Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion. Garland's face has never looked fresher – or more full of freckles.

The ardor of Dorothy's search to get back home to Kansas, as well as her delight at discovering her own resourcefulness and valor in her brave new world, pour out of Garland's eyes and irradiate the atmosphere. The Scarecrow's face has never looked more burlap-baggy – or better suited to soak up his pal Dorothy's excess emotion with his dry, steady warmth. This film's best special effect? Bolger's loosey-goosey gait.

When the Cowardly Lion sings out his dream of being King of the Forest, Lahr's extended shaggy-cat poses fit his uproarious outsize warbling. And when Dorothy tells Haley's gentle smoothie of a Tin Man that if he cries too much he'll rust, you see the oxidation start next to his nose (along with a rivet you might not have noticed before, right on top of it).

For many audiences, this release will be the only chance to view a Golden Age film on an immense screen in a premium theater, the way moviegoers experienced it at movie palaces in the 1930s and 1940s. For them, the “square” compositions, with their emphasis on human content rather than scenery, should be a revelation. This release uses sophisticated technology to revive primal movie magic: the connection between the audience and the 10-times-larger-than-life figures on the screen.

To my eyes, Dorothy occasionally looked smudgy against the yellow bricks, and the mesmerizing change from sepia to color when she opens her Kansas farmhouse door and enters Oz is a bit murky this time around (maybe those annoying 3D glasses moved around on my head). But once the population of Munchkinland begins singing and dancing around her, I experienced the scenes with euphoria I'd never felt before.

The little people's exuberance envelops you. Fleming's masterly staging dotes on their individual quirks, not just their wild getups, so you drink in what's funny or fascinating about their childish world in every inch of each frame. It's more “real” and amusing that in a Munchkin honor guard, not every soldier has “eyes right.”

Throughout, Fleming's clipped editing keeps the movie hurtling forward, while the merry bantering of the script (credited to Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf) and the brilliantly silly and lyrical E.Y. Harburg-Harold Arlen songs buoy you. “The Wizard of Oz” never talks down to its audience. When the Wizard tells the Scarecrow, “Every pusillanimous creature that crawls through the earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain,” kids who laugh at the sound of “pusillanimous” will want to look it up.

The 3D IMAX scale suits the film's outlandishness. When the mayor urges Dorothy to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” and briefly lifts up his enormous underbelly with his hand – to emphasize his command – the gesture takes on added comic weight. The sound is blissfully euphonious, the 3D effects sparing but effective, especially when the Witch tosses a fireball that appears to land in your lap. Her winged monkeys don't need to come at you to be scary.

In short, this presentation is the opposite of those sterile reconstructions that are out solely to make a buck. It's full of personality – and it gives a shot in both arms to a film that's about a girl constructing her new, young adult personality. Dorothy finds her way home by finding out what she's made of: The ingredients include the Scarecrow's brain, the Tin Man's heart, the Cowardly Lion's courage, and her own imaginative empathy.

With all that going on, Garland manages to be superbly funny and touching at the same time. She rises to a peak of grace amid the hilarity of Lahr's “If I Were King of the Forest,” acting as a flower girl and trainbearer at his mock coronation. There's something ineffably moving about the purity of her play-acting – and some special sorcery to its intersection with her costars' vaudevillian panache.

Everyone knows the film's explicit message: “There's no place like home.” But for Dorothy and movie-lovers who yearn for cinematic alchemy that draws on theater, literature and human nature as well as other movies, “The Wizard of Oz” also proves “You can go home again.”

From left, the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), Dorothy (Judy Garland) and the Tin Man (Jack Haley) behold the city of Oz in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
Judy Garland stars in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
Judy Garland sings the iconic tune "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
The Munchkins' Lollipop Guild welcomes Dorothy to Oz in this scene from "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
The Wicked Witch of the West will stop at nothing to get Dorothy's ruby slippers in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) threatens Kansas farm girl Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland), but she is protected by Glinda, the Good With of the North (Billie Burke) in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
Margaret Hamilton delivers an iconic performance as the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
Judy Garland and Billie Burke appear in a scene from "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
Kansas farm girl Dorothy Gale teams up in Oz with the Tin Man (Jack Haley) and the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), who remind her of people she knew back home, in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
Dorothy (Judy Garland) falls asleep in a field of poppies as the result of a spell cast by the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO
The Wicked Witch of the West receives a shock when she tries to touch Dorothy's ruby slippers in "The Wizard of Oz." COURTESY OF WARNER HOME VIDEO

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